I’ve “borrowed” some of those images for my blog. (Thanks,
Brandon!) Below find some info about the club, which was founded in 1948—making
it one of the oldest in Canada.

At first, the club met in member’s homes. It had a succession of
layouts in various places until 1980s, when a new layout was begun in the basement
of the Delta Bingo Hall.

The 42' X 52' layout was set in 1967, Canada's
Centennial Year, and the geography depicted Hamilton to North Bay with the
scenery showing all four seasons.

The club was forced to move in 1997 to Stoney Creek Plaza (where
I saw it). This time the 42 X 62 layout featured Toronto, Hamilton &
Buffalo operations in the Hamilton and southern Ontario area.

In 2007 they were forced to move again. Now in their tenth
location, at the Eva Rothwell Centre,
they are far enough along to provide photos of a great looking layout.

This
layout models the TH&B in the Hamilton area in the 1950s, with CNR, the CPR
and NYC limited to live interchanges to get cars on and off the layout.

They
also utilized David Barrows’ “domino” technique to build the layout—a good
plan, considering how often they’ve moved!

Buffalo
and Toronto are represented by staging. TH&B, NYC, and CNR trains enter the
layout from Buffalo to the NYC yard in Welland, From there, the TH&B
crosses the third Welland Canal on Bridge 15, reaching Hamilton via Smithville
and Stoney Creek.

On
their website, the club says “we're now in our seventh year building this
layout, and when you stand back and take a look, it's starting to look
finished. (It helps if you squint . . .)”

From
what I can see, it already looks like a Great Canadian Model Railroad; I hope I
can get to visit it someday.

About the TH&B: Based
in Hamilton, the TH&B was jointly owned by the CPR and the NYC, although it
operated as an independent railway for over 90 years. It was a bridge route
giving the NYC direct access to Toronto and connections to the Canadian railway
network. The Canadian Pacific, in turn, gained direct access to Buffalo and
NYC's "Water-Level Route" to New York City and Chicago.

Friday, January 13, 2017

The Rolling Stones sang "You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need."

What I wanted, about 15 years ago, was another CP Rail GP38-2 for my locomotive roster.

I found a Proto 2000 GP38-2 in the used bin at a hobby shop, so I bought it.

From day one, it ran poorly.

I tried everything, to no avail.

I even had a friend who was
expert in such things look at it.

It didn’t matter how much tinkering was done: It just wouldn’t
run well.

When it ran, the motor squealed. Other times, it wouldn't run at all; it would just sit there and hum.

Occasionally, it ran flawlessly, then reverted to its old ways.

(I'm not alone; a search online shows that lots of people had troubles with these units.)

Frustrated, I turned it into a static prop in the engine house
in Fort Frances.

And there it stayed for over ten years, its nose sticking out
of the door, just part of the scenery.

But last week I was bored, so I decided to try to fix it one
more time.

Nope; still the same problems.

In a fit of inspiration—or maybe just a fit—I decided to take out the motor and turn it into a dummy.

If it couldn’t pull anything, at least it could look like it
was, in a consist with two other four-axle units.

And that's what I did. At first, it felt bad tearing a locomotive apart. But I got over it.

And now it runs perfectly! Those Proto 2000 units roll so easily once the gears are removed.

And after some weathering, it looks good, too, now earning its keep on the layout, running with two other powered GP38-2 units (from Atlas).

So I didn't get what I wanted, but I got what I needed: Another four-axle locomotive for the layout.

This is not the first
time I have dissembled something I wanted to create something I needed on the layout. Click
here to readhow I took apart my finished and painted Rico station to make
it fit better as a flat against the wall in the Fort Frances yard.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Up here in the Great White North, we might be frozen, but
not forever—not like the Manitoba & Minnesota Sub. in my basement.

We have had a lot of snow this year in Manitoba; more than in the past
few years, that’s for sure. And now we’re in the middle of a really cold spell—minus
20 and below (Celsius).

But on the layout, it’s always summer, and always the early
1990s.

Frozen in time, in other words.

It’s also frozen in time in another way, as I explained to my
friend, Sheldon, who visited today. (The reason for the crossbucks in the
snowbank—to help him find my house).

A trip to the M & M Sub. is literally a trip back in
time, in two ways.

First, it's figuratively a trip back in time to the early 1990s, a time when CP Rail's trains were mostly pulled by the ubiquitous SD40-2 units.

It was a time when you could see a variety of liveries on those and other units: Multimark and no Multimark, Twin Flags, SOO (white and red and only red), and others (e.g. ex-UP and primer red and grey).

It's also a literal trip back in time to the early 1990s, when DC was the only way to operate trains, and Blue Box Athearn
locomotives were considered among the top of the line model railroad locomotives..

Yes, that’s right: For those of you who might be new to the
blog, the M & M Sub. uses DC (Dinosaur Control) and block controls.

In the early days, it was a matter of money. I didn’t have
much, and it was too costly to convert to DCC.

Now, money isn’t as much of a problem, but I still don’t
feel the need to change over from DC.

Although I can run up to four trains, I mostly run the
layout by myself, so there’s no need to worry about needing to have multiple units running at
the same time.

Plus, it's getting near to the end of the life of the layout; in another
year or two, I figure, we will probably downsize to a condo or apartment.

I
immediately recognized the concept, since it is similar to the way trains
traverse between the lower and upper levels on the Manitoba & Minnesota
Sub.

On
my layout, I also employ something that looks like his ovlix and does the job
of a helix.

In
my case, it goes around a 5 x 9 foot storeroom that also houses my upper and
lower staging yards.

It’s
like an ovlix, but larger. So maybe I can call it a rectix (rectangle
+ lix = rectix).

(Because the size of the room, I can't actually get far enough back to take a photo of the rectix. Plus, it is mostly hidden on one side and both ends.)

I
think Brian is on to something, and maybe I am, too. In addition to the
traditional helix (a circle of track that connects levels) and a nolix (where
the track rises around the walls of a room, as on Bill Darnaby’s Maumee Route
and Tony Koester’s NKP), we can now have words like ovlix and rectix.

They
may not catch on as words of the year, like “post-truth” in 2016, “emoji” in
2015, and “vape” in 2014, but maybe they’ll take off in the model railroad
world.

About Me

Click here for a topical index to the blog.
Click here for an index by year to the blog.
Click here for an index of Great Canadian Model Railroads.
Click here for an overview of the layout from the December, 2009 Railroad Model Craftsman.
Click here to view videos of the layout on YouTube.
Click here for a track plan.